Monthly Archives: May 2003

Here's an article about Conan O'Brien's upcoming episode done entirely in clay animation.

We have a total lunar eclipse next week. This article will tell you everything you need to know about it except exactly when it will be visible in your area. This page will figure that part out for you.

On the Record with Bob Costas returned to HBO last week. I think Costas is the best interviewer working today. Even when the subject is a sport I don't follow — and I don't follow any of them — I find him worth watching. And it isn't all about sports.

Several of you have written to remind me that Nora Dunn wasn't the only person who opted out of Saturday Night Live the week Andrew Dice Clay hosted. Sinead O'Connor had been booked as the musical guest that week and she chose not to share a stage with the Diceman. Ms. O'Connor instead appeared as the first musical guest of the following season. Two years later, she appeared again — and that was the infamous episode hosted by Tim Robbins. She ended her second musical number by whipping out a photo of the Pope and tearing it up, much to the shock of the show's producers. (In all rehearsals, she tore up a photo with less significance.)

Also, a couple of folks wrote to say that even the full 90-minute reruns of Saturday Night Live are not always complete, and that lines are sometimes edited. This may be so, but those are probably not strict edits. What SNL has sometimes done with its reruns is to substitute the version of a sketch taped at the dress rehearsal. I suppose they figure that once you get to even the first rerun, it's no longer live so it doesn't matter if they do this. But a couple of times, Lorne Michaels (or whoever) has decided to dump the "live" version of a sketch and insert the dress rehearsal incarnation, which may differ more than a little. They did this when they reran the episode with Sinead O'Connor and the Pope photo, replacing that entire number with the taping from the dress rehearsal.

So if you watch SNL reruns in sequence, there's a show where Sinead O'Connor ends her song by tearing up a photo of someone other than the Pope. Then on the following show, the guest host is Joe Pesci and he comes out in the monologue and discusses how on the previous show, Sinead O'Connor tore up a photo of the Pope, and he even shows the photo and how it's been taped back together. This will someday confuse the hell out of someone if it hasn't already.

There are a great many books about the Marx Brothers — trust me; I have them all — but the best is Joe Adamson's Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo. In response to an item posted here the other day, Joe writes…

In point of fact, the reason there were scenes in the old British 35's that are no longer in the American prints or negatives has less to do with alternate versions than with post-1934 Hays Office censorship — If you know your film history, you know that Joseph Breen made the U.S. Production Code much stricter in 1934 than it previously been, and cuts were made in American prints when Paramount re-issued the film, and the footage has never been recovered or restored. When we made The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell in 1981, we made an effort to find a British print that contained this footage, but were told that they had suffered nitrate deterioration since Allen Eyles wrote the book The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy, which I referred to in my footnote. There's a total of about 5 minutes missing, including a scene I describe as being in Kalmar and Ruby's script but not in the film — Well, it was in the film, but not today.

There was also an effort to locate this footage when the first videotape of Horsefeathers was made, but it was similarly unsuccessful. The place to try now is Russia, which was unavailable to film archivists prior to 1989.

I'm in the act of revising my 1973 book and just discovered that Paramount considered reissuing Monkey Business before Horsefeathers, and asked the Hays Office to tell them what cuts would be necessary — They responded with a short list of lines and scenes that are still in the movie today (including Harpo's gag at the Ladies' room) before Paramount explained that they'd decided to reissue Horsefeathers and Little Miss Marker instead — Hence the footage no longer there.

I've found in my research that there's about 5 minutes each missing from Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera, as well as Horsefeathers, tho I haven't been able to find any evidence of anything missing from any of the others. Look for my revision to contain a number of such treasures, about which I had not a clue in 1973 — but then, neither did the rest of us!

Thanks, Joe. You know, if the folks who own those movies now want to find that lost footage, all they have to do is put out real expensive DVDs of the current version and proclaim them as definitive. Once I purchase my copies, content that I will never again have to purchase these films, the missing scenes will turn up, just so they can put out new versions I have to buy. And then after I buy those, something else will turn up. (Hey, I'm going to have to buy another edition of your book, too…)

I'm posting this offer for my pal, Doug Molitor…

I have some five dozen MAD magazines ranging from 1962 to 1973 (#69-157, though not complete) some in only fair condition, but many in very fine condition (as long as you forgive the inevitable creases on the rear for the MAD Fold-In). Anyone who'd like to buy any or all of them, email me at this address.

Doug is one of the good guys so you can order from him in confidence.

Because at least one of my friends was unaware of it, I thought I'd mention that NBC is still rerunning old episodes of Saturday Night Live on its Up All Night weekend broadcast. Each week, a "classic" episode is offered. In some cities, it immediately follows the regular SNL broadcast. Other cities insert a show or two between them or don't run it at all.

Assuming yours does, you may want to note that they run the full 90-minute versions. The reruns on Comedy Central and E! are chopped down to an hour by omitting what someone feels are the weaker segments — with some qualifications. To retain the flow of a program, they always include the host's monologue, which is often the worst part of an episode, and unless it's really dreadful, they include the cold opening. But beyond that, whoever makes these decisions is free to dump what didn't work, and they usually pick well. Most of those shows are better without the weakest material but every so often though, a good piece gets dropped for the hour versions and it's nice to see it again, if only because it's fresh.

The episode scheduled for this coming Saturday night is from May 12, 1989 and it featured Andrew Dice Clay as host. The booking of Clay prompted long-time cast member Nora Dunn to walk off what at least a couple of histories of the show recall it as the last show of that season. In fact, it was the next-to-last (Candice Bergen hosted the following week) and Ms. Dunn was not in either of them. A friend of mine who worked on the show at the time recently sent me the following e-mail about it…

It was a very bad show and a bad week. Everyone was really burned out from the season and on the last few shows, everyone's always wondering "Should I come back? Will they even want me back?" Lorne [Michaels] hates it when people decide to leave before he's decided that he wants them to leave. Protocol is to wait until he decides and sends some sort of signal that this would be a good time for you to quit and say you're leaving to pursue other areas. Sometimes, this is true. I always assume that if someone leaves the show and goes straight to a big movie, another series or rehab, they left voluntarily. If they left to explore other avenues, they were fired.

Nora had been with the show for years. She was very good but everyone felt that they'd seen every character she could do. I don't know if that's true but that was the feeling. I don't know for sure if Lorne would have sent a signal but he was pissed that she didn't give him that chance and also that she quit the way she did. Without telling anyone, she suddenly put out this press release saying she wasn't doing show because she thought Dice Clay was a misogynist or something. She didn't call Lorne first. I don't think she ever even spoke to him again. She just put out this press release and she was gone. Everyone just assumed she knew she might not be asked back and didn't want to give Lorne the chance. So Lorne was pissed about that and the rest of the cast members were pissed because they were put in the position of seeming to endorse Clay because they didn't walk out. Well, it wasn't the same thing for the rest of them. Nora was probably leaving anyway so it just meant she did two less shows. The other people wanted to stay.

So they were all stuck with seeming to endorse Clay, whom none of them liked. It was a terrible show the way the last shows of the season can be when everyone's tired and they're trying to get in sketches that hadn't gotten into earlier shows. Clay wasn't very good but it wasn't all his fault. However if Nora cared about hurting Clay, she got the opposite of what she wanted. He got a lot of publicity and it was one of the highest rated shows of the season. Someone even accused Lorne of setting the thing up with Nora as a publicity stunt but I assure you it was not that.

Here's the rundown of the entire episode which is scheduled to run this coming Saturday night/Sunday morning. The pieces marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones that are omitted in the hour-version which turns up on Comedy Central…

• Cold Opening: Parody of It's A Wonderful Life with Andrew "Dice" Clay
• Opening Monologue by Andrew "Dice" Clay
• Sketch: Clay runs employment agency
• Sketch: "The Anal-Retentive Chef"
• Song: Spanic Boys perform "Keep On Walking"*
• Weekend Update with Dennis Miller: Includes Jon Lovitz as Annoying Man and David Spade as Michael J. Fox*
• Sketch: Clay gives sex lecture to his son, played by Mike Myers
• Sketch: Tony Trailer, Disc Jockey*
• Sketch: Jan Hooks announces she's been giving a poor performance in the show in protest of Clay
• Sketch: Clay as "Cool Mite"*
• Song: Julee Cruise performs "Falling"*
• Sketch: "Ridiculous Bull" with Clay as Jake LaMotta
• Sketch: Kevin Nealon explains his light role in show is in protest of Clay*
• Goodnights

Anyway, I'm not recommending the episode because, like the person quoted above said, it wasn't very good. But I like the fact that NBC is running these uncut versions, and I wish they'd run some of the ones that Lorne Michaels didn't produce. Some of those episodes haven't aired anywhere in an awfully long time.

I don't know anyone working in comics today who draws purtier pictures than my pal and occasional collaborator, Steve Rude. So go visit his website and look at some of those neato commission drawings.

Harvey Fierstein on Being a Woman.

A few weeks ago, we were talking somewhere on this site about Dean Martin's recording, "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" It got very little play when it was first released in 1960 but seems to have made a comeback. Here's a link to some of what we said over there…but more important, here's a link to the song itself, playable on your own home computer, courtesy of the Capitol Records website.

And while we're at it, here's are links to Sinatra singing "The Lady is a Tramp," "Come Fly With Me," and "I've Got the World on a String." And here's Dino warbling "That's Amore." Never a cover or minimum here at news from me.

A week from tomorrow, May 15, the entirety of Late Night with Conan O'Brien is being done in clay animation. Honest.

Animation World Magazine has a good article that answers the musical question, "Whatever happened to Saturday morning cartoons?"

There are loads of wonderful websites out there that spotlight the work of a talented artist for comic books and/or strips. I'm going to try to recommend one a day here, starting with Terry Beatty. Terry's a classy guy who has never done less than first-rate work. As you can see for yourself.

From Scott Miller comes the following…

I really enjoy your weblog (and have for some time now), and your latest entry about the possibility of putting alternate versions on DVD reminded me that this has been tried at least once, with The Big Sleep. Someone (or several someones) has probably already brought this up, but just in case they haven't, the DVD currently available from Warner Bros. features (on Side A) the theatrical cut we all know and love from 1946, while Side B features the 1945 version that survived only because it was a print that had been sent overseas for the G.I.s to watch. The 1945 cut makes a little more sense plot-wise than the 1946 version (though not much more — this is The Big Sleep, after all, and not even Raymond Chandler knew who killed the chauffeur) and has a number of different scenes, despite there only being a 2-minute difference in run times.

I agree with you — it seems to me that this is exactly the sort of presentation DVD was made for. I'd love to see some of those alternate versions (like, for example, Horse Feathers, whose British versions apparently have a scene entirely missing from the US version on video — if I remember what I read in Joe Adamson's Marx Bros. book correctly).

I recall that from Joe's fine book…and perhaps now that I've posted this here, I'll hear from Joe, because I'm a little fuzzy on how long the "most complete" version is. Of course, this also raises the issue of what is the "correct" version and how we determine that. We've occasionally seen home video companies splice in outtakes or scenes that were cut before the official premiere and announce that they have "restored" a movie to its original version. The version that gets previewed is often not the version that anyone associated with a film ever felt was the final one. The interesting thing about the foreign versions is that both were meant to be exhibited.

…that the current issue of Publishers Weekly has a good review of my book, Mad Art. If you don't have a copy of this handsome, informative volume, you can click on that name to order one. Please do this.